


lost for words (a story from floor 6)

by Anonymous



Series: floor 6 [1]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:01:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24520501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Travis likes to think he has a lot to say.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: floor 6 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772029
Comments: 11
Kudos: 110
Collections: Anonymous, victors' tower canon works





	lost for words (a story from floor 6)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WreakingHavok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WreakingHavok/gifts).



Travis likes to think he has a lot to say.

Most of it is mundane. Most of it is trivial and harmless, and with a little courage he can let it spill out freely. That's how he envisions it, when there is no chat to ramble to and he is offering his thoughts to the people that matter to him most. Like releasing a brightly-coloured bird into the air. Like grabbing at their attention, selfishly, with its startling plumage.

But the rest doesn't want to be said, not when the air is thick with surveillance and he's always, always been taught to assume that it is there.

Autumn has arrived in the Capitol. He knows this not by any difference in the beautiful grounds of the Tower, but by the absurd amount of photoshoots they have taken him to. This facet of life as a Victor has never hurt him as much as it does some of the others.

"It's 'cause you've never had it any other way," Cooper posits over brunch. It's a savoury pastry of District 10 invention; most of the food in his life has been tasteless, all of it imported. Telling this to Ted upsets him somehow, so Travis resolves to tell him less and accept his cooking gratefully. It really is delicious. "You'll see, after the-In October." The Pre-Games.

"Oh, yeah?" Normally he tries not not to contribute at mealtimes. Eating with just one person at a time comforts him, but makes this difficult. Nodding, Cooper grinds the side of his spoon into his food. They don't have knives anymore.

"Between, uh," he pauses thoughtfully, "October and the New Year, they don't make you do interviews or photoshoots or, or business meetings or whatever. It's all downtime." Then he makes the face that he always does when he wants to say more, but can see the microphone on the ceiling. Travis always ignores both the expression and the surveillance. "For the new kid, call it, like, an adjustment period? Fuck knows. And for obvious reasons, _you-_ "

"Never got it." Finishing the sentence for him, Travis feels himself retreat into a frown. He doesn't see why this matters. Sometimes his job is fun! Sometimes it is not. That's all there is to it. When it's not they often let him see Tommy until he calms down, which is its own reward.

After a minute or so he watches as Cooper gives up on the spoon and burns his fingers on the pastry. He makes a dark joke about his mentor and Travis doesn't laugh, already on his way to find an Avox and ask for the right medicine.

One morning, it strikes him that after everything it's been at least half a year since his subdued introduction to the others. Half a year of his life spent running errands, or else in this strange and quiet mock-up of a house. How sad, Cooper would think. Travis doesn't really know _what_ to think. He opens his mouth to answer Noah's absent question regarding breakfast choices, and what comes out is quiet.

"Whichever you're having."

He pushes the resulting mushy grain around with the back of his spoon with glum enthusiasm, and wonders very briefly if he will always function this way. He doesn't remember thinking it the next day.

Once, though he has been dutifully ignoring the sound of Carson's nightmare screams as the others do, he tries to comfort him in the library. He knows this place hurts him more than the Games ever did. He knows he shouldn't know that. It's a bad thought to have.

_Bad thoughts, Travis, see, bad thoughts bring in bad ideas. Bad ideas lead to bad things, bad people. Bad for the factory; bad for everyone. Easier to cut out the middleman, dear, and nip those bad thoughts right in the bud. Sleep quietly, now._

His hands shudder on the book between them - an insulting gift from the President, written for toddlers, he knows these days exactly how the world sees him - and the words swim before his eyes, and he wants to tell his friend that he understands. That it doesn't have to get better for them to keep on loving him.

"I like his books too," comes out of his mouth instead, and Carson puts down _The Art of War_ for just long enough to offer him a shielded smile.

It's so much worse, the day they realise.

Ted makes a point of cleaning, sometimes, the Avoxes dispersing at his exigent behest. This is an odd decision but not inherently a bad one. It's how they calm themselves down in District 10, he maintains stubbornly, and apparently it has always worked for him.

Of course Travis always does his best to help. He too finds the quiet rhythm of it soothing, when the perfection of the tower gets too much. As he knows all too well, the flawlessness of it cannot be trusted. Enjoyed, maybe, but never trusted.

A few of them are working through a little-used room full of district relics - presumably arranged to invoke some kind of nostalgia. It's tasteless. None of the tools or machines have ever seen use, as far as Travis knows, apart from the blunted woodcarving tools on the mantelpiece. He's seen Cooper actively bare his teeth at the useless fishing tackle before, which seems to sum up everyone's feelings on the reminders of the lives they would have had.

And it's fine, until Charlie presses a rag into his hand idly and murmurs an instruction.

"Do me a favour, clean off the sewing machine? You know it best," he adds hastily, with his eyes glued to the very expensive vase Ted is currently balancing on his elbow.

No. No, he doesn't want to. He feels sick just looking at it, thinking of the shaking of mother's wrists, her place in the army of hunched backs he would have joined by now if not for the Games. He can't.

"Sure thing!" his stupid dumb mouth says in a stupid chipper way, and Charlie spares him an odd look before diving to catch the falling china.

The entire time, he tries not to look at the machine. Tears well up when he sees the oil smeared down his shirt. District 8 will never, ever let him go, and the Capitol has its claws in him at every turn, and there is _nowhere_ he can go to escape them-

"Trav, pass me that?" Charlie asks him at lunch. They've taken a break for fruit and sandwiches, and he doesn't want to share. He's hungry. But he shrugs and hands over his orange anyway with only the slightest resentment. There must be a good reason.

The background chatter slows to a stop. Ted and Cooper look at them like they've both lost it.

"Travis," Charlie says seriously, handing it back, "You really don't have to if you don't want to." His eyes are narrowed. Calculating. Sad. Why is he sad, what? What?

"Sorry!" he says, bewildered, unsure as to why Charlie looks so disappointed. "Sorry, I can-"

Before he can come up with some pacifying favour Charlie gets up and backs out of the room, disgust written across his features. Travis has no idea what he's done wrong, but something in the way Cooper goes rigid says he very much does.

"Trav?" he mutters gently as Charlie storms away. It's the voice Tommy uses on him when he is crying very hard, and it hurts just as sorely as the kind of pain he has come to know very well. "Travis, do you mind if I-"

"Of course not!" he snaps. This time there's a desperate edge to it.

"He didn't even finish," Ted points out quizzically around the last of his sandwich, exchanging a worried glance with Cooper like a concerned parent. Like his mom. And then Travis really does feel sick, because he's doing everything right and his best friends are looking at him like a Peacekeeper in their hallway. How is he supposed to keep them around if they don't want anything from him?

He runs. Four pursuing feet become two become none. An argument begins behind him.

Charlie's crying when Travis finds him. This is worrying because he has only seen Charlie cry twice - once on a screen and once through a door.

The first time, the Games, what feels like so long ago; Slimecicle on a branch, sobbing so hard it cuts through the grime on his face in great pale furrows and almost falls onto the Career below. The horror of it glues him to the screen set into the wall. The old thing crackles and whimpers like a dying dog. That's when Travis' mom comes home from her shift, fingers bleeding, and he has to explain for the fifth time that it's mandatory viewing, Mom, it doesn't just _turn off_. No, he doesn't enjoy it! Yes, he'll turn the volume down. He's sorry.

The second time, a year and a world away, he is sobbing in his mentor's arms and it is not something Travis should be seeing. Midsummer heat has drawn him here anyway. Through the sliding glass door of the balcony he watches his friend cradle to his chest a rough-hewn wooden bird, as if it were a real animal in distress that he presses to his heart. These tears do not shake his whole body. They are silent and unobtrusive, like toxxxicsupport as she crouches to comfort him. It is his nineteenth birthday. The scarf in Travis' hands - knitted around his favourite patterns of thanks, friend-love and home - feels suddenly, horribly, inadequate.

Now Charlie is crying like the dangerous people back at home cry - hot and angry bullets that tempt the supervisors from their posts. That warn others from straying too close in the streets. He is perched like a bird on the kitchen island, back to the wall, tearing his cloth into pieces with stronger hands than Travis knew he had.

"I'm super sorry," he says instantly, rushing over. Charlie looks, for the first time in their friendship, entirely lost for words. "Please stop breaking things. They'll be mad. I'm sorry, please, _please_ just tell me what I did. I can fix it!" 

"Fuck," Charlie says simply. "Fuck me, but they got you good." He lets Travis take the dustcloth and watches dolefully as he pulls out a needle and thread and does his best to patch it. Without protest, though. So Travis tries, he tries, he's trying so hard but his fingers have never been deft enough for needlework and now they're shaking hard with the effort of a smile.

This effort is growing, it's getting harder; Ted and Cooper's voices are raised in the distance and the both of them are yelling at a fever pitch. No. No, this is falling apart. If Noah comes back from his interview, if Carson gets back early from his photoshoot, if the minute sounds of approach that Travis has been attuned to for the past fifteen years change any further, he is going to cry too. And they will all abandon him without a second thought.

"Dude." He looks up instantly and the needle almost goes through his finger. Now Charlie has stopped crying, but his hands are curled around his knees. He looks utterly distraught. "Please just stop it."

And he doesn't ask why. Almost without thinking, he drops the cloth and thread and needle all and backs away from the pile like a factory fire. At that, Charlie's mouth flaps gormlessly. Not one joke. Is he ill? As Travis cautiously approaches, he lets out a strangled sound like...like he has just won the Hunger Games again.

Travis leans on the island, offers Charlie an orange from the fruit bowl. "I don't know much about District 8," he says, ignoring it, "but on my Victory Tour they showed me the fence. Did you know the grass dies every time it crosses over from District 11? They seemed proud of that. I always thought it was sad."

Travis stares at him blankly and Charlie sighs. It's exasperated. "You aren't there anymore, man. We're not Peacekeepers, or your bosses. We're your friends, okay?"

"I get it," his treacherous little mouth lies. The debt he owes these men is too much for anyone but Tommy to comprehend. Let them think it's been repaid.

"Are you sure? You still look a little, hah, needled." This pun is an olive branch. Travis chooses to take it, and laughs very hard.

Everyone treats him like glass, now. Even Cooper, who knows how terrible it is. Over time he lets more of what he wants to say out. But he won't - can't - say a word on this, as long as they're all happy. Travis wonders very briefly at night if he will always function this way. He doesn't remember thinking it the next day.


End file.
